baroqueMorales

I recently discovered Chrome Experiments following links about data visualizations and analytics on Google.com.  This one is called Breathing Galaxies and I have it set as my screen saver at work.  It allows you to generate complex (hypotrochoid) geometric forms that expand/contract and change color.  

After many years of neglect, I'm revisiting this experimental personal blog, first started in 2005!  It made me wonder about this history of Blogger.com as a service. Per The Story of Blogger , it was started by a company called Pyra Labs in 1999 and acquired by Google in 2003. Blogger was released to the public as a product in Beta in late 2004.

I decided to start this process of remedial documentation of my personal processes and progress for several key reasons.  Need mechanism to track what I've been doing with my time, what works and what does not.  Feel the need to write to rebuild language facility, memory, retention and to combat unemployment-related depression.   My personal productivity today was as follows...and this is how productive I should be everyday.  Woke early 6am before construction crew was to arrive to work on building-wide project.  Was dressed and working by 7:30.  Spent morning searching for and applying for jobs.  Did some outreach to recruiters, old contacts and requested informational interview with someone doing my target job of Media Producer at Expedia.  Have social meeting scheduled for this afternoon in Seattle and informational interview scheduled for Thursday morning.  Prioritized rest of afternoon finalizing, printing and sending response requir...

Back on the job market, I'm overwhelmed with the to do list and decided to attempt documenting my progress here.  I had very recently accepted a new full time position as a helpdesk analyst, but made a plethora of what I thought were low-level errors that resulted in my being "not recommended past probationary period" as in "please turn in your badge, keys and bus pass."  Did the walk of shame out the door and long bus ride home.  This has been a galvanizing experience in that I realized just how much time I wasted in the preceding months.  There is always so much to do, but I found that when you are in the middle of a protracted length of unemployment that it becomes harder and harder to prioritize tasks and feel productive.  You just have so much apparent time on your hands that everything can be put off until tomorrow.  Unfortunately, without the normal need based tasks, you can pretty much just stop living for awhile which is exactly what I did.  T...

"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans..." my mother The content of this blog is intended to reflect that perpetual internal to do list that organizes that which is inspirational: reflections on books read trials and tribulations of the job hunt summaries of online seminars development and description of professional interests reflection on association conference attendance an opportunity to practice technical and creative writing The blog is intended to combat the persistent encroaching despair of the unemployed with a tendency to sleep more than absolutely needed, watch endless reality shows, political action campaign advertising, recorded media, and domestics: laundry, chores, dinner, dishes, cleaning and organizing...

I was lucky enough to be able to attend Infocamp Seattle October 2nd and 3rd 2010 on a crisp fall day at Seattle University  In case you are unfamiliar, Infocamp in billed as a unique "unconference" experience where the attendees are also the participants.  Sessions led by subject matter experts in a various information related fields are initiated on-site and participants sign up for the sessions on an ad-hoc or as available basis.  This is a great opportunity to get face time with leaders in the library and information science disciplines: user experience, information design, content strategy, librarianship, marketing, etc  A wiki for this years Infocamp is available here . I attend Infocamp as a thought exercise, something to challenge myself, to learn about new sponsors interested in grads from our field, to collect technologies, people and information which I will document here for future investigation.  My absolute favorite session called "Get your ass...

I recently decided to resurrect this site after letting it lie dormant for 3 years! rather than start from scratch because on review, I found inspiration within. I was pleased to note some developmental changes in the Blogger platform and so I just quickly, restructured and redesigned my blog, and dusted off some old posts. I decided to start writing, because I need a platform of expression..one that should be relatively anonymous because at this time, I have no audience that cares about my thoughts. I find myself staying up late at night, thinking about things I should either be doing, developing, documenting or learning about, and I decided a blog would be a good place to consolidate some of these potential projects. At the time that I started this blog, I had just decided to apply for grad school and was waiting my acceptance letter. I started the MLIS program at the University of Washington in late 2006, which I worked on while working full time as an academic medical progr...

Audience: this note is in draft form and will continue to be worked on as I refine my thinking on this topic. I've tagged you in this note because each of you are unique and excel in very specific ways.   I'd love to hear your thoughts on developing intrinsic motivation and what deserves to be a labor of love. Being currently unemployed from structured employment for the first time in many years has given me pause to think about the source of motivation.  I'm in the search for that "dream job" ...the job you get after putting in all the hard work, doing the training, getting the degree, going to networking events, taking little side jobs, analyzing job requirements, filling in gaps in one's resume, attending job-related seminars, doing more research on companies, setting up job alerts in search aggregators, tapping networks, going to informational interviews and writing and thinking more about what one really wants out of life anyways... or may...

The other day on break in the gift shop at work, an old Russian medical interpreter I was acquainted with stopped to say hello. He showed me a book he was reading and was so enthusiastic he said “if you wouldn’t mind, …the prose is just brilliant…if you would just read the first page, and you will be hooked.” He had a beautiful Slavic accent softened by years of speaking English. I was a little distracted by work things and not really feeling patient, but I stopped to read the page. I don’t really remember what it said, or who the author was…I just had a moment where time seemed to stop and began to experience silence and a feeling of peace. Then we went to the cash register where he bought a rather large handful of multicolor “Lindt truffle balls.” I was there to buy a retractable ID badge holder since mine had broken recently and some multicolored hair-bands (1.49). Being sort of patriarchal, he asked me if I was married. I smiled, my first reaction whenever I’m...

The Future of Libraries: Public Libraries: History has proved a pervasive need for publicly-funded libraries and modern research continues to solidify their continued support.   Public libraries are seen as the public’s Community Research & Development department and vital public assets.   Public libraries will continue to be a central force in our civic lives for the foreseeable future.   Municipalities will continue to support libraries as spaces in response to the various critical needs of their increasingly urban, technologically-savvy and diverse constituencies.   We have seen how libraries continue to evolve to meet the needs of their client base and this will continue to be the case.   The only question is how to prioritize the diverse needs of the community within a single entity.   Assuming a current trend of increasing processing power, sophistication in consumer electronics, and the demand for mobile content, some future functions I see...

Jennifer Morales LIS 526 Spring Quarter 2008 URL: http://staff.washington.edu/jemor/index.html Government Documents Uncover the Story of the DMCA Overview Article: The Electronic Frontier Foundation. Unintended Consequences: Seven Years under the DMCA v.4 April 2006 Retrieved June 01 2008 from: http://www.eff.org/wp/unintended-consequences-seven-years-under-dmca Abstract: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 has been and continues to be controversial across the spectrum of content creators, distributors and consumers.   Currently in its tenth year, the DMCA has had wide-ranging effects on the distribution, access and use of information, particularly in regards to fair use of copyrighted work for research and teaching.   This article summarizes the DMCA, highlights some relevant litigated cases and its relevance to the library field.   Introduction: From its inception, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has been and continues to be controversial...